Accueil>A Workshop on Adding Copyright Reform to the Open Access Agenda

09.11.2022

A Workshop on Adding Copyright Reform to the Open Access Agenda

À propos de cet événement

Le 09 novembre 2022 de 12:30 à 14:00

This workshop is the first in a series of seminars on law and technology organized as part of the "Towards a New Digital Rule of Law" Project at Sciences Po Law School.

>With John Willinsky’s new (open access) book from MIT Press as a starting point, this workshop considers how copyright may be a remediable problem in our pursuit of what we now agree is best for science, namely, open access. After all, copyright offers publishers no legal support for open access, while bringing the full weight of the law to bear on journal subscription payments. Willinsky asks whether this is impeding the move to open access in a timely manner at a fair price; does it call for more than copyright workarounds, such as sharing final drafts? Willinsky invites consideration of two legislative remedies. The first is strengthening copyright’s research exceptions and limitations; the second is introducing statutory licensing for research publications. He inquires after the international implications of such reforms, particularly amid current European copyright initiatives. He asks, ultimately, whether it is time for those interested in the progress of science to take up copyright reform.

In conversation with Willinsky, Séverine Dusollier argues that a blind application of open access to all types of knowledge or creation might trigger similar issues of commodification than an excessive copyright protection and exclusion implied. While supporting more openness in copyright and recognising its benefits, the conditions and practices of creation and how they will be impacted by an open access mandate, as well as the asymmetries of power between creators and users of works, need to be considered. Otherwise, open access movement runs the risk, in some cases, of transforming knowledge into marketable assets instead of creating an effective relational and collaborative approach of creation, production and transmission of knowledge and culture. This is particularly true with open access of scientific publications whose evolution has largely benefited publishers to the detriment of early-stage career scholars and researchers from the Global South.

John Willinsky is Professor, Simon Fraser University, and Khosla Family Professor Emeritus, Stanford University. Having founded the Public Knowledge Project in 1998, he has seen its open source Open Journal Systems (OJS) grow into the world’s most widely used journal platform. His dozen books include The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship (MIT Press 2006) and The Intellectual Properties of Learning: A Prehistory from Saint Jerome to John Locke (Chicago 2017).

Séverine Dusollier is Professor at Sciences Po Law School. Before joining the Sciences Po faculty, she was a Professor in the University of Namur, where she taught intellectual property, IT law, property, competition law and media law. She was the Director of the CRIDS (Research Centre in Information, Law and Society), gathering more than 40 researchers engaged in a wide area of technology-related issues, from sociology, philosophy, communication to law and economy. With other European professors, she has founded the European Copyright Society to voice the opinion of academics on copyright in the European Union. Her current research relates to intellectual property, copyright and mainly on IP limitations, the public domain and the commons.

This workshop will take place in hybrid mode. Registration is required. Zoom link will be provided closer to the event to those who signed up for the online option.

À propos de cet événement

Le 09 novembre 2022 de 12:30 à 14:00